Follow year-old Chris King on his morning routine. He wakes up, goes into his bathroom and puts in his contacts. He also swallows a pill. But it's not just any pill.
It's one that a gay man like himself in the s wished into existence β and could have died while waiting for it. The club DJ and event producer from New York considers it "kind of like a medical miracle. But the Supreme Court may soon stop requiring insurers to cover PrEP and other preventive medical care services for free, pending the results of a case regarding the Affordable Care Act it's set to hear ; it stems from a group of Texas small businesses that don't want to "encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity and intravenous drug use.
The news ignited a maelstrom of opinions on social media, ultimately revealing that people within and outside of the gay community hold all kinds of views on sex, and what constitutes it as risky or dangerous.
These arguments aren't new, but they highlight that the stigma around gay sex and HIV is still very real. The discourse illustrates that we "still live in a cycle of stigma around sex behaviors, period," says Benjamin Goldman , licensed mental health counselor. For many people, there's a hesitation when it comes to "talking about sex, having sex, having good sex, exploring and figuring out what we want sexually.
In case you missed: The twisty, titillating, controversial history of poppers. PrEP became available in , and so with it the freedom to have sex without fear of contracting HIV.
